Daisy
by Sevenstars
Summary: Jess ponders the various aspects of "Miss Daisy"'s addition to his family.


**Daisy**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: A little Jess-musing about the newest member of the Sherman Ranch family.

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The day I first come here,  
I had no one and nothin', 'cept Traveller.  
Less'n a day, and I had a family.  
A big brother—and a job to do,  
teachin' him that the world didn't sit on his shoulders;  
a little brother (that was Andy),  
and an uncle (that was Jonesy).

Two years on, and I got another little brother,  
to stand in for Andy while he's off at school.  
And then... then she came.

Miss Daisy.

She ain't much like I remember Ma,  
though I got to say, I reckon she cooks even better.  
How old would Ma be now?  
She had four before I was born,  
and I'm just turned twenty-seven...  
comin' up on sixty, I reckon,  
though she didn't see forty-five.

So I got a ma, again.

Feels strange, to be livin'  
in the same house with a woman,  
again, after all these years.  
To hear a woman's voice callin' me to meals,  
or tellin' me to be careful when I ride out,  
or talkin' gentle out of the darkness when I'm fevered and hurtin'.  
To stop on top of the ridge  
and see her skirt swishin' as she moves around the yard;  
to lift her down off the buckboard seat;  
to smell that violet sachet she puts with her clothes,  
or the lemon-verbena scent she favors;  
to feel her hand brush against my shoulder...

it's made a difference to this place, I got to say,  
and not just 'cause the grub's so much better  
now that it ain't Slim and me doin' the cookin'.

And it's right surprisin',  
the way she fit herself in,  
faster even than I done when I come here.  
Seems like she knows,  
somehow, just how far she can take it,  
while we're still gettin' used to havin' her here;  
knows she can't expect us all to change  
from bein' bachelors all at once.  
How she's took to the rhythm of our livin',  
and what must seem to an Eastern lady  
to be a mighty dusty primitive kind of place,  
where your neighbors are five miles away,  
and the coyotes yowl at the moon every night,  
and there's Indians, and horses that buck,  
and cattle that don't rightly know  
what to make of a human on foot...  
I recollect the day one of 'em wandered into the yard  
and like to treed her in the barn—  
lucky thing she was close enough to get in there  
before it could charge. Oh, yeah,  
and bears, and wolves, and cougars,  
and guns in the livin' room,  
and guns at my side and Slim's—  
though we're tryin' to remember to take 'em off  
in the house now.

And she's about half got a beau, too.  
Mose wasn't too happy with all that baggage of hers,  
that first day, but it don't mean he ain't about ready  
to follow her from here back to Denver...  
Slim says he kinda comes unhitched  
when she's around... well, he'll do more'n that  
if he ever tries to take her away from here!

'Cause I ain't sure we could get by  
without her again, now that we've had her here a spell,  
and not just on account of Mike and the Judge, neither.

It's funny—it sure is,  
the way all of us have fit together—  
first me with Slim  
and Jonesy and Andy,  
then Mike with me and him,  
and now Daisy with us...  
somethin' in that iron-flavored water  
from our pump, maybe?

Like, somehow, we'd been a family  
all our lives, only it took a spell  
for us to find one another.

Listen at yourself, Harper,  
you're gettin' plumb fanciful  
in your peaceful old age here.

Still mighty good, all the same.  
Like there was somethin' missin',  
and she supplied it. What's that sayin'...?  
"What is home without a mother,"  
that's it. Or "Mother is the light of the home."

Well, she is.

'Course there's times...  
but then, there's another sayin',  
"No rose without its thorn." Or, like I told Slim  
after Parkison shot him, you gotta take  
the bad with the good...

No, that don't exactly fit. 'Cause she's good.  
Good for all of us, and a good lady

How 'bout that now, Harper?  
Three brothers, and an uncle,  
and a ma. You ain't doin' so bad  
at all, for a man that used to figure  
he'd die alone before he was thirty.

Yeah, somehow  
she makes the place feel right.  
Finished, like. Complete.

Miss Daisy.


End file.
